


(thankfully we're) together this year

by portraitofemmy



Series: the one with the dog [15]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Discussions of marriage, Dogs, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Season/Series 04, Quarantine Thanksgiving, Quentin Coldwater Lives, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27715799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portraitofemmy/pseuds/portraitofemmy
Summary: Quentin and Eliot's Thanksgiving is not going entirely according to plan, but who's is, this year? They're figuring it out. At least they've got each other.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: the one with the dog [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1404727
Comments: 13
Kudos: 145





	(thankfully we're) together this year

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. It's gonna be weird and different, but I hope everyone can stay safe and find some joy. 
> 
> Thank you so much to **hoko_onchi** and **propinquitous** for cheerleading and beta reading.

Thanksgiving was supposed to start on Sunday, for them.

That was the plan, at least, until Quentin and Jackie had a huge, blow-out screaming fight the Tuesday prior. Eliot gathers, based on what he can’t help overhear from Quentin’s side of the conversation, that their request for a two-week quarantine prior to going down to visit had not been followed. It’s hard to gather much more than that, with Quentin out on the balcony and Eliot sitting on the stairs to the now mostly abandoned second floor, trying to convince Des that the little toe-nail-claw grinder was not actually a device sent directly from hell to end her life. 

The pitch of Quentin’s voice is rising, as the phone call goes on, the way he gets when he’s upset and can’t grab for composure enough to disguise it. In Eliot’s lap, Dessy whines, and maybe it doesn’t have much to do at all with the supposedly pain-free nail cutter. “Dad’s okay,” he murmurs to the puppy, who blinks up at him balefully, clearly skeptical of Eliot’s insight on the matter. “Yeah, I know, I don’t like hearing him like this either.”

She doesn’t seem very soothed, and he can’t really blame her.

Quentin’s cheeks are flushed when he comes in, splotches of color on his pale skin that are either the chilly November wind or the anger— probably the latter. “I take it we’re not going to Jersey?” Eliot hedges, bending down to deposit the wriggling dog on the floor so she can scamper over and stare adoringly up at Quentin, her little butt wiggling until he picks her up. 

“Molly fucking— went to bookclub last night,” Quentin bites out, still kind of high-pitched and loud. Affecting a high, condescending tone, he parrots. “ _It’s less than ten people, Quentin, it’s allowed._ Inside! Without masks!”

“Jackie said that?”

“She sure did!” Dessy whimpers and starts licking at Quentin’s face, and he deflates, leaning back until his thighs hit the back of the couch, perching a little. “I don’t get it, El. Mom’s smart, she’s— educated and worldly. I just keep—” He cuts himself off, frowning, looking down at the door in his arms. 

“Keep what?” Eliot prompts, even if he could probably guess, based on context clues, based on how well he knows Quentin. 

“I keep thinking Dad would have been better about this,” Quentin mutters, his big brown eyes wet when he looks up. The ache of sympathy takes up residence in Eliot’s chest, and he nods, levering himself up to stand.

“Maybe,” he agrees, mostly just to show he’s listening as he moves over towards them, until he’s close enough to fit his hand under the curve of Quentin’s skull, lean down and kiss his temple.

“He was good about— like, listening to doctors, mostly. At least when it came to me.” Quentin’s voice is quiet, full of a private hurt— even it’s been, god, going on two years without his Dad. And Eliot doesn’t _know_ , he’ll never be able to _know_ what it’s like to mourn a parent that was good to you the way Ted was good to Quentin, but— he still aches for _their_ Teddy, whenever he thinks too much about it, so. He can fill in the blanks. “I just can’t imagine Dad wouldn’t do whatever it takes to see us.”

“They could get a test—”

“That’s not the point!” Quentin cuts in, pulling back to look at Eliot with an angry scowl. “Almost a full fucking year I’ve been trying to make this work, with Mom. I deal with her snide comments about me dropping out of school, I deal with her constant judgement about my mental health, I deal with _all of Molly’s tank load of bullshit_. I’ve dealt with fucking— all the anxiety that trying to meet up with her this summer and fall put me through and they can’t take _two weeks_ out of their social lives so we can eat dinner in their house? I don’t _want to see her_ , Eliot, because if I do I might leak some battle magic all over the sweet potatoes.”

“Hey, you don’t need to sell me on it,” Eliot says, holding his hands up. “I’ll cancel the rental car right now.”

A frown interrupts the angry look on Quentin’s face. “Oh shit, are we going to get charged?”

“No, cancelations are free until the day before,” Eliot says dismissively, sifting his fingers through the long curtain of Quentin's hair. "If you don't want to see her, then we won't. That simple."

"I don't want to see her," Quentin says, still frowning. The downturn to his pretty mouth makes a wave of protectiveness surge up in Eliot’s chest, but there’s nothing he can do about this besides give Quentin the space to work through the feeling. "But I _want_ to want see her? Does that sound insane?" 

"No, I don't think so," Eliot says, quietly, and doesn't say _you want her to be your dad_ because it might be true, but it's not going to help.

"Lydia says I need to get better about enforcing boundaries with her. Mom, I mean." He wrinkles up his nose, face unhappy. "It's not exactly something I've had to work on a lot, before now. Her being _overly_ involved in my life was never exactly the problem, before."

“Well, Lydia would probably know,” Eliot says, because hey— isn’t that why people have therapists? To say things like _You need to work on enforcing boundaries with your mom?_ Dessy starts wriggling to get put down and Quentin turns enough to deposit her onto the couch. It leaves his arms free, and Eliot takes advantage of it, sliding in to loop his own around Quentin’s neck. Quentin’s warm, despite the fall chill still clinging to his clothes, and his hands come up to hold Eliot’s waist automatically, fingers rubbing against the texture of the cardigan Eliot’s wearing.

“I like this sweater,” Quentin says, distracted, looking down at Eliot’s chest, the distress sliding off his face. “Very cozy.”

“Cozy is a new fashion priority,” Eliot murmurs, little bubbles of fondness pushing at the base of his throat. It’s true: he hasn’t worn a blazer in _weeks_. Oh, he’ll still put in the effort when they leave the house, or when he needs some extra layers of armor, because he still likes the way it makes him feel. But he likes the way this makes him feel, too— touchable, comfortable, inviting. It’s nice to be that, with Q.

“Sorry our plans are falling apart,” Quentin sighs, running flat palms up Eliot’s sides, up across his chest. “Some fucking Thanksgiving, huh?”

“The rest of our plans will go unchanged,” Eliot says with a shrug. “We'll mirror-Skype with our friends and cook the world's smallest turkey— it's basically a chicken, we could have gotten a chicken.”

“We could have gotten takeout—” 

Eliot scoffs. “What kind of trophy husband would I be if I left you to get take out on a national holiday that revolves entirely around eating?” 

Quentin snorts, rolling his eyes. “You're hitching your horse to the wrong wagon if you want the life of a trophy husband, baby.”

“Yeah, Junior Cowboy Camp? Am I hitching my horse wrong?”

“Fuck off,” Quentin laughs, no heat at all. At least he's smiling again, face tilted up towards Eliot's. “Besides, technically you're not hitched anywhere yet.”

“Not yet,” Eliot murmurs, halfway to kissing him already, noses rubbing together. “Found my wagon, though.”

“That is the dumbest and most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me,” Quentin snickers, but Eliot is already shutting him up with a kiss. 

––––

_“This time last year,” Eliot had said to his therapist, on last Saturday’s call, “I really thought we’d be engaged by now. It seemed there was a clear road ahead, and I was excited to, you know, walk it.”_

_“So why aren’t you?” Patrick had asked, through the screen of Eliot’s tablet, propped up on the coffee table to face him where he’s sitting on the floor in front of the couch so he can stretch his legs out. The condo’s empty, Q out with the dog as is their habit for the hour long therapy calls every week. “Are you waiting for him to propose?”_

_It hadn’t actually occurred to Eliot, that things might go that way. “No,” he said honestly, looking out into the distance of the room. “No, not at all. I always assumed it would be me, which is maybe something, I don’t know. Internalized?”_

_“Maybe,” Patrick said, with that amused smile he always put up when Eliot tried to jump ahead and predict where he’s going with a line of questioning. “But from what you’ve told me of your relationship dynamic, you often end up in the more assertive role.”_

_“Maybe that's also something internalized.”_

_“Maybe that’s you digging too deep into something that’s not the real source of your concern,” Patrick tossed back, still with that gentle teasing, and Eliot sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why haven’t you proposed?”_

_“I don’t think it’s me being afraid of commitment or anything,” Eliot said, and lord, he could hear the defensiveness in his own voice. “I mean. I have been before. I know that. But... We’re already committed. He’s my partner. I want to be with him, forever, and I tell him that as much as it seems, you know, relevant.”_

_“Being married is different, though.”_

_“Is it? I don’t know how it’s functionally any different than what I already have, besides like, taxes that we have to fudge anyway, due to our very strange magical incomes.”_

_Patrick’s look was a little too knowing through the little Zoom window. “There’s a kind of permanence to marriage that there isn’t to other forms of commitment.”_

_A beat passed. Two. “But I want that.”_

_“Well, that’s good to know. It’s good to notice yourself wanting that.”_

_“I just— I want the world to be better, when I ask,” Eliot said, looking down. “I don’t think there’s any point in getting married if we can’t have our friends, our family here with us. Not when we’re, you know, basically already there.”_

_“Then why are you dwelling on it?” Patrick asked, in that way of having landed on the 40 million dollar question._

_“I don’t know,” Eliot said, mostly just to give himself time to maybe find out. “I think— I’m worried that I’m running away?”_

_Silence hung in the air between them, Patrick deliberately leaving Eliot space to think about what he said, allow him to elaborate on it or walk it back as he saw fit. He kind of hated that silence, the expectation in it. How loathsome, to be expected to think about yourself. Finally, when Patrick spoke, it wasn’t what Eliot expected. “Have you looked at rings?”_

_“A little,” Eliot said, frowning. “Just online, I can’t really go to a jeweler right now. Besides, Q’s not an_ accessories guy, _you know? He doesn’t even wear a watch.” Even as the words left his mouth, though, they pinged a memory— half-faded and nearly lost to time and whatever the magic of the mosaic was. Squinting past the tablet, Eliot teased the memory out. “When... he got married, before. To his wife, I. I gave him a pocket watch. It was enchanted, to show the Earth, and his father’s planes... He loved that watch, he wore it every day. Like he wore her ring.”_

_“Nothing you’ve said to me sounds like running away,” Patrick said, with a gentleness that Eliot still has no idea what to make of. “Nothing about your situation is standard. You’re trying to reconcile a relationship that is both 50 years old, and just over one year old— during a highly stressful time which is activating trauma responses in both of you, I might add. The fact that you still want to get married after 7 months of quarantine is probably better proof than anything I can offer.”_

_“Living with him is easy,” Eliot said, a small smile on his face. “Not all the time, he’s an ornery little shit sometimes and he’s allergic to picking up after himself, but— I’m always glad he’s there with me. Even after 50 years, I was always glad it was his shoes getting under foot.”_

_“Then trust your instincts, if you feel like now’s not the right time.”_

_“My instincts are all fucked,” Eliot laughed, unexpectedly tearing up. “My instinct generator’s been broken my whole fucking life— My_ instinct _was to dump him, and my_ instinct _was protect him, and that nearly got him killed. I can’t trust_ anything _, except...”_

_It hung in the air, the unfinished thought Eliot never asked for. “Except?” Patrick prompted._

_“Except him. I trust him.”_

_“It’s good that you do. I’m glad you have him, Eliot.” So rarely did Patrick say his name, that it made Eliot look back at him, finally, the fuzzy video call set up on the tablet Quentin bought him so he had something of his own to do this with— so he’d never feel like his access to his therapist was controlled by Quentin in any way._

_“He’s a good man.”_

_“So are you.” It sat uncomfortably, like scratchy roughspun wool, made Eliot want to— minimize it, or deny it, unable to actually look at the concept. “We’ll work on helping you learn which bits of yourself you can trust, okay? And what to do with the others.”_

_Eliot’s wet eyes spilled over, and he had to look away again, but— he nodded down at his knees. “Okay.”_

____

Julia had tried to persuade them to come out to the library for the holidays, but they wouldn’t have been able to do the two week isolation, if they were going to meet up with Jackie and Molly, so they’d opted out. “Which, upon reflection, was a bad call,” Quentin says, Wednesday afternoon, stationed on the other side of the kitchen island, cutting up bread he’d made early in the week with the express purpose of letting it go stale for stuffing. “Never let me pick my mom over Julia, ever again, okay? Julia’s done way more to earn my time than Mom ever has.”

“Got it, Julia over Jackie,” Eliot says blandly, looking up to wink at Quentin, who rolls his eyes, sticking out his tongue before going back to the bread slicing. 

Their Thanksgiving prep is going pretty well, in Eliot’s humble opinion. They’re going to have a lot of food for two people, but Quentin’s got some ideas about taking leftovers out to one of the covens he’s been doing mending work for. Some of the covens have holed up in safehouses together, choosing communal living over complete isolation. The rest are left finding other ways to connect, with Quentin and a couple other go-betweens all that’s left of the physical network of Kady’s hedge alliance. People are finding new ways, of course; Quentin had been very excited by the news of some hedges on the west coast starting spell-share gatherings via Zoom. 

But, technology aside, there are, apparently, a higher than average number of runaways and unattached teenagers floating through the physical safehouses this year. Eliot suspects that if it weren’t for the virus, they’d be playing host to a bunch of teenage hedges who’ve kind of adopted Quentin. He doesn’t hate the idea— god knows he could have used a Quentin when he’d stumbled into the city, 18 years old and leaking magic out his ears in explosive spurts. 

So their little turkey is brining in the fridge, along with green bean casserole and sweet potatoes (recipes Eliot couldn’t forget even if he wanted too, and dear lord does he kind of wish he could sometimes) all waiting to be baked off tomorrow. Stuffing will go into their last big glass dish, and go in at the same time as the turkey. They’ll cook the pies tonight, pumpkin waiting to go into the graham cracker crust cooling on the counter, and the apple Eliot’s working on now, hands moving fast to make the dough before the butter melts from the heat of his skin. 

“Are you putting rosemary in the pie crust?” Quentin’s voice sounds quizzical, confused, which doesn’t exactly make sense.

Eliot looks up at him, frowning. “Yeah. I— Ari used to do this, remember? She showed me, she always put rosemary in apple pie.”

“Oh— _fuck_.” Quentin puts down the knife, and Eliot looks down, alarmed, half expecting to see blood, but there is none. Just Quentin’s upset face. “I forgot that. How could I _forget that_?”

“It’s just pastry—”

“No, it’s— it’s _not_ , it’s my _wife_ , it’s my _son_ , I can’t _forget things!_ ”

“Hey,” Eliot says, abandoning the pie crust to circle around to Quentin’s side of the counter because he looks like he’s about to pass out. “Hey, you’re not forgetting them, Q. Why don’t we go sit down?”

“Your pie crust,” Quentin says, half-heartedly, but he lets Eliot steer him towards the couch nonetheless. 

“Fuck it. I can start it again. Or not, honestly, what do we need two pies for?” Quentin lets out a strangled laugh, sinking down to sit, and Eliot sits with him, knee to knee. His hands are still covered in butter and flour, he can’t _touch_ Q the way he wants to, just rests his wrists against the insides of his own knees and watches Quentin rub his hands up over his face, palms grinding into his eye sockets. 

“You never worry about forgetting them?” Quentin asks, soft, dropping his hands to look at Eliot from behind his messy hair. Cursed buttery hands, Eliot can’t even fix it for him. 

“I don’t think so,” Eliot says, carefully, thinking through the words as he speaks, because Quentin deserves that. “I guess I never feel like the memories are going anywhere. I don’t think about them all the time, but— whenever something relevant comes up, the memory is right there, just waiting for me to reach for it.”

“I used to think about it all the time,” Quentin admits, his voice quiet, his gaze fixed somewhere in the distance. “I used to— fucking _cling to it_ , to that. That proof, you know? That I was capable of having it.”

“Having—” Eliot starts, cautious, because there’s a fragility to Quentin he hasn’t seen in while, leaving Eliot feeling like he needs to be careful so he doesn’t break something, “—what, Ari?”

“Ari, Teddy, _you_ ,” Quentin laughs out, looking at Eliot with wet eyes. “It wasn’t just proof that _we_ worked, you know, it’s proof that _I work_. I’m not, not, not— you know, too broken to have a life. A good life. A happy life.”

Eliot swallows around a sudden ache in his throat. Floury hands be damned, he reaches out to brush his fingers against the furry skin on Quentin’s forearms, his soft warm skin. “Of course you’re not, sweetheart.”

“You say of course like that was always a given,” Quentin says, laughing a little but it’s not a happy sound. “It very much was not.”

“I know,” Eliot says because he does. God, doesn’t he know?

“I know you do,” Quentin sighs, shoulders collapsing. He slides his hand up until he can tangle their fingers together, heedless of the mess. “I just— El, when you weren’t here, last year... I thought about it all the time. I touched every memory I could get my hands on, because I needed— I needed to know, you know? That even if I was never going to have it again, I had it once. I’m capable of having it.”

“Yeah, I. I think I understand that,” Eliot says, fighting the urge to apologize again, for leaving Quentin to babysit his body. It’s nothing they haven’t hashed out in a long time. “You’re not thinking about it as much, now?”

“No, I guess I’m not.” Quentin frowns, looking back from the middle distance to Eliot. “Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “Maybe you just don’t need to cling to it as hard, because it doesn’t feel as out of reach now? I’m not saying you’re happy now, or anything, but—”

“I am happy,” Quentin cuts in, a little smile curling on the edge of his mouth. “I’m, still, you know— _me_. I’ve still got the messed up brain chemistry and things are still hard sometimes. And there’s, you know, the whole plague thing.” He waves his hand somewhat vaguely towards the outside in an all encompassing gesture, seemingly unaware that Eliot’s heart is trying to crawl out of his throat and take up residence in Quentin’s lap. “But this isn’t even the worst year of my life, personally speaking. Honestly, it’s not even in the top five.” 

“Yeah?” Eliot asks, hating, _hating_ the quaver in his own voice.

“Yeah. _Yes_ , Eliot,” Quentin says, the sudden intensity in his face making Eliot’s head spin. It’s okay, though, because Quentin’s reaching out for him, cupping his hand at the side of Eliot’s jaw. “We’re doing it again, right? A beautiful life, you and me.”

“You and me,” Eliot echoes, feeling his heart— _catch—_ “You know I’m going to marry you, right?”

A smile breaks out across Quentin’s face. “Really? You’re doing it like this, with pie crust on your hands?”

“ _No_ , I mean, I’m not _proposing_ right now, I'm just saying. You know. I want that.”

“I know you do,” Quentin sighs, voice brimming with great fondness, thumb brushing against Eliot’s jaw. “I want it too. I’m glad this isn’t the proposal, though, because I have to admit, I was expecting something _much_ more elaborate.”

“Oh, I’ve got time. I don’t even have the ring,” Eliot teases, laughing, but Quentin’s already climbing into his lap.

“Hopeless,” Quentin murmurs, shaking his head, smiling, smiling as he loops his arms around Eliot’s neck and kisses him. Kisses him, soundly, like he’d kissed him under the stars on the mosaic, and under the boughs of the trees where their son tied their hands, and in the falling confetti of New York Pride. He’s smiling still when he pulls back, completely uncaring if Eliot’s getting floury handprints all over the back of his shirt. 

The pie crust melts on the counter, but Eliot can’t really bring himself to care.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found as portraitofemmy on most places, but check me out on [twitter](https://twitter.com/portraitofemmy) and [tumblr](https://portraitofemmy.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


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